3.19.2015

The Financial Apocalypse

When He broke the third seal, I heard the third living creature saying, “Come” I looked, and behold, a black horse; and he who sat on it had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, “A quart of wheat for a denarius, and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine.”

REVELATION 6:6-7 NASB

This verse from Revelation is an interesting one because it talks about a phenomenon of our time--the inequality of wealth. A denarius was a day's wage, and a quart of wheat is a pittance for an entire day's worth of work. Meanwhile, the admonition to not harm the oil and the wine is the insult to the injury as working people slave to feed themselves while the rich enjoy a banquet of the finest things at their expense. This disparity can be seen in this chart:

The wealth of the richest won't actually fit on the chart. And this is just in the USA where even the poor are better off than over 90% of the rest of the world. Similar figures from around the world paint the same picture. A very few people are grossly rich while the rest are left to scramble for the crumbs. This tendency for wealth to collect in the hands of the few at the expense of the many is depicted accurately in economist Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century. This map also tells an interesting story:

Half of this nation's wealth is not concentrated in Silicon Valley or Texas but in the Northeast Corridor. And what is in this region of the two country? This would be government (DC) and finance (New York.) These are the two sectors of the economy that produce virtually nothing of value to the rest of the country. Through force and fraud, they loot this country. This is Chesterton's Hudge and Gudge in action. Granted, there are some other rich folks in the country, but I have a computer and a full tank of gas that they gave me in exchange for my dollars. The only thing the political and financial world has given me is a tax bill and a debased currency.

I don't know how much longer this madness can continue. Just yesterday, the Federal Reserve let Wall Street know that the party is still on as they sent no signal that they were inclined to raise interest rates. The stock market responded by surging upward. This party is being paid for by the theft of the rest of the country through the Federal Reserve printing press. We can only guess how much is sloshing around the derivatives market that dwarfs the stock market but is invisible to rest of the country.

There is a financial apocalypse coming. It will sweep the world. This towering edifice will collapse, and no one will be untouched when it falls. It has been built on usury and counterfeiting. And, if you are a poor working person, you should welcome this collapse. This collapse will be your liberation because the real economy is shackled by the make believe economy of these rats. These rats are the ones that have made a college degree a ticket to indentured servitude instead of the middle class. These rats are the ones who have made healthcare unaffordable. These rats are the ones who built all those empty houses. These rats are the ones who reduce people to working multiple part time jobs and collect from their sweat the interest on consumer loans and credit cards. These rats are the ones who have ballooned our national debt beyond any ability to even pay the interest. And when they get in trouble, they expect the working people to bail them out. Our gains belong to them. Their losses belong to us. This is injustice, and quoting Ayn Rand will not make it justice.

Justice will come when you see financial executives jumping from windows and overpaid government employees are put into the street to look for real jobs. I look forward to that day not because I want to see people suffer but because I want to see people stop suffering. Those who make a dishonest living should get what is coming to them. And those who make an honest living should at the very least be able to live. I pray for justice.